TeamBOK: Team Body Of Knowledge
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TeamBOK: Team Body Of Knowledge
100 Lessons That Made Me a Better Teammate
About the Book
TeamBOK: Team Body Of Knowledge is a practical field guide for anyone who wants to be a better teammate, not just a better “individual contributor”.
Instead of abstract theory or generic advice, this book distills 100 concrete lessons about how real teams actually work: how they’re formed, how they get stuck, and what you can do tomorrow to make yours a bit more effective, safer, and more enjoyable to be in.
You’ll find ideas on:
- Team basics & foundations – what really makes a team (vs a group), faultlines, interdependence, feedback, basic rules of the game.
- Diversity & composition – personality, culture, faultlines, language, and why “diversity” can both help and hurt.
- Structure, roles & norms – charters, team roles, norms, meetings, and how to avoid over-managing.
- Goals, motivation & performance – goal-setting, accountability, evaluation, and staying focused on results.
- Conflict & difficult behaviors – social loafing, differing expectations, graded assertiveness, and how to argue without breaking the team.
- Communication & listening – listening skills, questions, common information effect, and how to keep quieter voices included.
- Leadership & networks – leading in organizations and networks, information asymmetry, and when to use substance vs process.
The book is designed for busy people: each lesson fits on a few pages, with a clear idea, short explanation, and often a reference to the underlying research. You don’t need to read it cover to cover.
You can:
- Dip into the chapter that matches your current pain point (conflict, meetings, roles, etc.).
- Skim lesson titles, pick one that resonates, and apply it to your team right away.
The difficulty level is “medium”: accessible for non-managers and non-specialists, but grounded enough for leads, managers, and coaches who want more than slogans. You’ll see both research-based insights and field-tested heuristics coming from years of working in software teams and cross-functional environments.
This is not a book about becoming a “hero leader”. It’s a book about becoming a more reliable teammate: someone who understands how teams really function, who can navigate conflict, contribute to psychological safety, and help the group deliver better results together.
About the Author
Table of Contents
- How to Use This Book
- Introduction - Software Is a Team Sport
- Chapter 1 – Team Basics & Foundations
- Lesson 1: The stronger the faultline, the greater teamwork could break down
- Lesson 2: Do not tight manage your team
- Lesson 3: To mitigate common information effect: ―Encourage critical thinking ―ask questions and engage ―alert of teammates different expertise―minimize teammates status difference ―rank-order alternatives.
- Lesson 4: In international setting, we often equate level of fluency with expertise and competence dismissing less fluent members. As a less fluent speaker: ―Prepare! ―ask if people understand what you are saying ―ask colleagues to repeat if you missed a point ―refrain from switching to native language
- Lesson 5: Managers have very little time left to maintain and increase their former specialized knowledge. ―Soon, they lag behind specializations professional subordinates, making difficult to take good decisions. ―Your professional subordinates knowledge is precious. ―So foster a climate of cooperation and do not control them too much to prevent their tendency to leave the organization.
- Lesson 6: Offer feedback on observed behavior, not on perceived attitudes
- Lesson 7: Power reserve, reciprocity, loser respect, process completion, one chess board at a time, no turnaround are the basic rules of the game
- Lesson 8: Frame your information but do not boldly lie
- Lesson 9: Interdependent work and common objective is the difference between team and group
- Lesson 10: Group nominal technique is useful when there are many possible ideas
- Lesson 11: Collaboration is the result of assertiveness and cooperation
- Lesson 12: Graded assertiveness is a communication technique used in areas like aviation and healthcare for raising safety concerns, one step at a time=> Hint, preference, query, suggestion, statement, command
- Lesson 13: What makes a good listener? Concentrate, be active, do not interrupt and do not overreact
- Chapter 2 – Diversity & Composition
- Lesson 1: If you require innovation, seek high educated and cross-functional team members.
- Lesson 2: With Myers-Briggs personality test, infer the diversity and the team average on each personality traits.
- Lesson 3: Choose openness, extroversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness as team values
- Lesson 4: Power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and, long-term orientation define team profile.
- Lesson 5: Resolved disagreements and personality clashes result in greater intimacy, and a spirit of co-operation emerging
- Lesson 6: The way we work within a team is shaped by our personality
- Lesson 7: When it comes to accuracy, if you put a horoscope on one end and a heart monitor on the other, the MBTI falls about halfway in between
- Lesson 8: Conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, extroversion composed the five-factors model
- Lesson 9: Diversity is relevant for everyone, everywhere: Be yourself, be observant, be aware
- Lesson 10: There are different kinds of diversity: The different dimensions of diversity Educational, dispositional, circumstantial and cultural diversities
- Chapter 3 – Structure, Roles & Norms
- Lesson 1: Optimal team size is 5 to 10 people
- Lesson 2: The team is structured formally
- Lesson 3: Generalist or Specialist teams? ―Specialist teams work best in predictable, routine task environment because of added efficiency. ―Generalist teams work best in dynamic task environments because of added flexibility.
- Lesson 4: Team performs better with group-based incentives
- Lesson 5: There are nine key team roles: ―investigator ―teamworker ―coordinator ―plant ―implementer ―finisher ―evaluator ―shaper ―specialist.
- Lesson 6: Cooperative team norms make individuals more satisfied, more performant, more compensated.
- Lesson 7: Introduction of team charters manifest in improved communication, effort, mutual support and cohesion.
- Lesson 8: Encourager, Harmonizer, Compromiser, Gatekeeper, Standard setter, Commentator, Follower are the informal team roles
- Lesson 9: Norm are very hard to change
- Lesson 10: Implementer, coordinator, shaper, plant, resource investigator, monitor evaluator, teamworker, complete finisher defines the Belbin team role types
- Lesson 11: No one should ever be typecast in a role
- Lesson 12: Put in place a strategy for overcoming role weaknesses
- Chapter 4 – Goals, Motivation & Performance
- Lesson 1: You can come from different backgrounds, but you have to cultivate the fit in terms of shared values and goals
- Lesson 2: Consider specificity
- Lesson 3: Virtuality hurts team performance
- Lesson 4: For innovative goal, compose your team of members who are dissimilar to each other
- Lesson 5: Use extrinsic and intrinsic motivation to motivate your team members
- Lesson 6: Maintain team tasks & relationships, both are important
- Chapter 5 – Meetings, Projects & Decision-Making
- Lesson 1: Evaluate team performance by focusing both on objective and subjective team performance ―Objective performance example: team’s statistics —sales,costs reduction, % project completed—, and customer satisfaction. ―Subjective team performance example: team’s feeling)
- Lesson 2: Teams can accomplish tasks and projects that individuals cannot
- Lesson 3: Starting, doing and completing project requires different roles
- Lesson 4: The Team Charter consists of 4 sections: the Team, Team Dynamics, the Project, Timetable
- Lesson 5: A meeting is effective by achieving its objectives in minimum of time with satisfaction of everyone
- Lesson 6: Prepare the meeting, process the meeting and finally commit to actions for next team meeting
- Lesson 7: Defining objectives, scope, WBS, schedule and responsibilities is a good start
- Lesson 8: Define SMART objectives: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timed
- Lesson 9: Decompose your main task in sub-task is the purpose of the work breakdown structure —-WBS—
- Lesson 10: To schedule: define your action plan and visualize it in a GANTT
- Lesson 11: Improve your team decision-making with brainwriting, nominal group technique and decision matrix
- Lesson 12: Brainwriting gives everyone a chance to articulate their own ideas before being influenced by other
- Lesson 13: Evaluate options according to a grid of criteria with decision matrix
- Chapter 6 – Team Development & Lifecycle
- Lesson 1: Forming, storming, norming, and performing are the ways teams evolve
- Lesson 2: What is the forming stage of Tuckman’s team theory? Tuckman’s theory focuses on the way in which a team tackles a task in different stages: Forming - Storming - Norming - Performing. ―During the forming stage, the group members are just getting to know each other and usually do not yet have a clear idea of what is expected of them. ―They spend time observing each other, are cautious in how they present themselves, and want to be accepted by the rest of the group.
- Lesson 3: Team building is a process not an event
- Lesson 4: With group norms and roles established, group members focus on achieving common goals, often reaching an unexpectedly high level of success
- Lesson 5: Clearness, commitment, rules, respect, process is the secret of high performing teams
- Lesson 6: Who are we? Why are we here? What is the task? are the questions highlighted in forming stage
- Lesson 7: Responsibility, agreement, commitment, acceptance are the questions highlighted in norming stage
- Lesson 8: Understand the ending, celebrate closure, feel contribution appreciation, are the actions done in adjourning stage
- Chapter 7 – Conflict & Difficult Behaviors
- Lesson 1: To manage social loafing: ―use smaller teams, address it early ―assign meaningful tasks ―assign unique roles ―make individual contributions identifiable ―use hybrid
- Lesson 2: How to mitigate relationship conflict? ―Establish and reinforce norms that make vigorous debates the norm rather than the exception ―Address early! ―Try to transform relationship conflict into task conflict ―Avoid inflammatory language and ask people to re-state their views ―Manage task conflict iteratively
- Lesson 3: Do not resolve a task conflict by using power, but preferably drive it to negotiation: I will do this for you if you do such-and-such for me.
- Lesson 4: When authority is not efficient in a conflict of interests, widen the issue to multi-issues deal. This is asking the others to come up with issues that matter to them, and then barter these issues for each other to output a common deal. e.g, You solve a part of my issue then I accept to endure part of your issues. This generates more space and flexibility for deal resolution, and more opportunities to reach a beneficial decision.
- Lesson 5: To make dialogues between leaders and professionals, distinguish the substantive approach of the process approach. ―Use and mix wisely both approaches. ―The substantive approach is simply finding a substantive solution to a specific problem. It is straightforward but prone to conflict. ―The process approach is a continuous process where the solution emerges on its own. It mitigates conflict but it’s slow and half-hearted.
- Lesson 6: Stage of conflict is the nature of the storming stage
- Lesson 7: Conflict can sometimes be good and should be stimulated!
- Lesson 8: Tasks related conflict promote organizational success and prevent premature consensus
- Lesson 9: Do “transformational leadership” is the best way for conflict management
- Lesson 10: Who is in charge? How will we do this? are the questions highlighted in storming stage
- Lesson 11: When trust is missing, support the development of the social and emotional aspects of the team
- Lesson 12: When trust is feared, encourage debate and acknowledge that not all conflict is bad
- Lesson 13: When commitment is lacking, support all team members to voice their ideas and opinions
- Lesson 14: When accountability is avoided, raise the difficult issue of team standards and expectations
- Lesson 15: When there’s inattention to results, find a way to make membership to the team more rewarding
- Lesson 16: Differing expectations/ goals: Often team members will be working with different objectives in mind and sometimes with hidden agendas.=> Agree on team members goal with a team charter
- Lesson 17: Poor work standard of a member: Point out immediately substandard work with clear directions
- Lesson 18: People taking control/dominating: A dominant team member can cause others to withdraw and their voices to be lost.=> Ensure everyone has their say
- Lesson 19: People being actively critical: It is difficult to participate if you fear ridicule by a team member who is constantly critical of your ideas.=> Make the critics written on a white board
- Lesson 20: Free riding/ social loafing: Some people do not put in an equal amount leaving others with a heavier load.=>Use graded assertiveness
- Lesson 21: Staying ahead of conflict: Everyone feel heard? Everyone happy? Everyone pulling their weight?
- Chapter 8 – Communication & Listening
- Lesson 1: Poor communication: Poor communication within a team can result in a failure to meet goals. => Agree on communication channels and schedule regular team meetings
- Lesson 2: Extending the conversation: Extends conversation with ‘closed’, ‘open-ended’, broadcast’, ‘expanding’, ‘ricochet’, ‘back to the sender’ questions
- Lesson 3: 10 types of listening responses: Use ‘Giving advice’, probing, feeling, paraphrasing responses
- Lesson 4: Engaged Listening: An engaged listener conveys to a speaker that they are focused on what the speaker is saying thanks to Position, pause, acknowledge and be sincere
- Chapter 9 – Leadership, Power & Networks
- Lesson 1: Shared leadership tends to better team performance.
- Lesson 2: Leading a network is an entirely different game than leading an organization or leading a team. From the most complex cluster to the least: 1)network 2)organization 3)team ―Networks are relatively loose clusters of organizations. This network of organizations meet each other to attain common goals. ―An organization is a tight cluster of departments or teams, sharing a mission, culture and values. ―Teams is the last level of the chain: it is a one unit cluster, where team members have concrete goals.
- Lesson 3: Most often, leaders operate in networks. In such unstructured problem, there is not a right solution but a set of solutions influenced by: ―your cultural background ―your political views ―the dynamic in the network
- Lesson 4: In a networked world, project-management mindset is not enough. You need a process-managerial mindset for aligning actors, finding out what the best solution in such dynamic world. With process-based mindset: ―there is no right solution. ―you consider that problems are unstructured and that a lot of information is contested. ―you start from the solution, then try to find problems. ―decision-making is actually a continuous process: The decision is not made, it emerges.
- Lesson 5: An organizational chart is way more complex than it conveys.―Organizational charts communicate the formal relations between organizational members and propose how decisions should be made.―But it can be impacted by informal relations like not planned encounters out of work context
- Lesson 6: Top-down versus bottom-up, approaches=>Choosing between collaboration loss or captivity
- Lesson 7: Top-Down Approach: the leader using his formal authority directly
- Lesson 8: Difficult to tell who the actual team leader is, typically defines the performing stage
- Lesson 9: There are no set rules as to how team leadership takes its shape
- Chapter 10 – Creativity, Safety & Learning
- Lesson 1: Leverage your team creativity by using nominal group technique and time limit brainstorming
- Lesson 2: Psychological safety has massive implications on team performance. ―As a leader: be accessible, invite feedback, model openness & fallibility ―Trust in relationships: invest in interpersonal relationships ―Practice fields by trial runs, off-site/off-line meetings, simulations ―Provide organizational support: well-defined team tasks & goals, and sufficient information and resources to get the job done
- Lesson 3: Transactive memory is the most powerful way to facilitate sustainable performance and learning. To develop transactive memory, do:― Training in work teams ― Training focused on the task to be done ― Especially relevant for execution-focused teams
- Lesson 4: Final word: Where there is unity there is always victory.–Publilius Syrus
- Lesson 5: Stay positive: Your feelings matter
- Teamwork: Help Your Team Help You, become a better teammate.
- What you’ll learn
- Who it’s for
- Scan to visit
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